The big news this spring is the ‘changing of the guard’ in the vineyard. Paul and Beverly Goralski will now tend and cultivate the incredible grapevines of Tartan Hill with help from daughter Renae. The Goralski clan is an ambitious crew with a passion for operating small businesses with quality in mind. We look forward to meeting you and hope you find time to come out and visit us at the winery to taste the fruits of last year’s harvest. The winery is in the process of changing ownership and should be complete sometime in September of this year, so we say au revoir to Bob and Carol Cameron, we wish them well on their journey to Colorado Springs, CO. We thank Bob and Carol for their hard work and dedication over the years to Tartan Hill and for their pioneering work to firmly establishing Oceana County as a viable growing region for producing wine quality grapes. Good luck to the Camerons! Although the Cameron’s are relocating to Colorado Springs, Bob will be in and out of the winery during the balance of the year until the ownership change is complete.

Last autumn’s harvest was the best seen at Tartan Hill since opening. By the end of the growing season an impressive of 1435 gallons of grape juice, at least for us, was extracted through our presses from all grape varieties. The moderately warm growing season left us with grapes possessing a nice balance of acid and sugar content.

While tending the vineyard of Tartan Hill this summer, we are looking forward to expanding and improving an already good thing! At Tartan Hill we are already able to cultivate well-balanced mouth-watering grapes, but we want to produce more of them. Our near term plan includes the expansion of the vineyard to make room for additional Vitis vinifera grape varietal. In addition, we will experiment with the production of a fruit wine by blending grape and pear juice. The Tartan Hill grapes are ideal for this combination due to their crisp clean taste; moreover, the winter pears grown here in Oceana County contain high concentrations of sugar when they fully ripen. These juices unite to produce a crisp semi-dry wine that is both full of flavor and refreshing on warm summer days, or during the winter months while in a steaming hot tub (as I’ve been told by some wine aficionados). Of course, one thing is for sure, the incredible views of Oceana County’s gentle rolling hills, found on the high ridge of the winery, is nothing short of remarkable. This we hope will never change in this land we consider god’s country. Thank you Mother Nature for the last glacier movement, which formed this beautiful and unique landscape

This section will be dedicated to exploring interesting tidbits of information related to wine in this issue and future issues. Have you ever looked into an unopened bottle of wine and noticed tiny crystal like objects that deposit themselves on the bottom of the cork? Well, within chemistry circles, these crystals are known as precipitants, an insoluble solid compound formed during a chemical reaction in a solution. The crystals are commonly referred to as potassium bitartrate, which results from the reaction of tartaric acid (the primary acid within grapes) and potassium. (both tartaric acid and potassium occur naturally in grapes) These tiny crystals are not flaws; they are harmless, and in no way detract from the flavor of the wine. On the contrary, they are considered a sign of quality, usually in seasons of good harvests.

In a recent volume of Wine Spectator, a well-known wine journal, one can find a comprehensive tasting evaluation of America’s regional wineries, including some here in Michigan. I thought it might be interesting to reflect a bit on the outcome of their evaluation. First of all, two Michigan wineries were recognized for producing wines that scored 87 points, and a third winery with a wine scoring 86 points. The wineries and their respective wines are as follows: Bel Lago’s Brut Leelanau Peninsula 1998; Black star Farm’s Riesling Old Mission Peninsula Ice Wine A Cappella 2000; and L. Mawby’s Brut Michigan Mille 1995 respectively. James Molesworth, a top wine journalist and critic based in New York, performed the tasting evaluation and scoring. In all he and his team blind-tasted more than 600 wines from 192 wineries across the country with the highest score given to any wine being 88 points.

I found it interesting that many of the cool-climate grown and produced wines that did score well were produced from Riesling and Vidal Blanc grapes. Cool climate regions are well suited for growing these two extraordinary varieties, which plays a large part in the success Michigan wineries enjoy with these varieties. We at Tartan Hill are also pleased with the performance of our Riesling, which eventually finds its way into our Late Harvest wine.